The Hunted

"Its a marginal, but its habitable."

"Its also the worst one of the lot we've seen so far."

"Look, you're not going to find a decent planet and be able to keep the Augies away."

"And once we get we get it into decent shape, we're only going to have a few years to enjoy it before the Augies show up and take it away from us. For all their bragging about how superior they are to us Norms, they seem to need decent planets as bad as we do."

"You made your choice back on Earth. It was either come out here or join the Augies. At least this way you're still human and not one of those machines. We've got two hours before we have to leave this system or the Augies will know we're here. Your group is up, and if you don't want it, then Kar's group gets to go if they want it. Do you want it or not?"

"Let me put it to a vote. If the group wants to go, we'll go."

Thad thumbed a switch and spoke.
"Gamma group, we've been offered this world. As you can see from the reports, its shit. The atmosphere is barely breathable, the sun's a bit unstable, so we're likely to have problems with electronics and there's a good chance any children born on that world will be at a significantly higher risk of mutation and diseases like cancer. We have just a short time to make up our minds, so I need your answer now. Anything less than a clear majority means we don't take it and we stay onboard."

As the votes silently began to appear on the screen, the science officer spoke up.

"We're getting a weird pattern of neutrinos from that star. There's either going to be a pretty massive flare here shortly or we're going to get a CME. Either way, its going to be a bumpy ride down. We're probably going to want to power down most if our gear and then make the jump once the storm has passed. Or, we could jump now and forget about this world."

Thad looked at the results of the voting and everyone who had voted so far was in favor of landing. The few remaining votes that had yet to be cast were inconsequential.

"We're going," he said quietly. Thumbing the comm switch again, he addressed the members of his group. "Ok. We've got enough votes. There's a solar event coming, so everyone to your pods for immediate drop. Its going to be a nasty trip down, so make sure everything's secure before you punch out."

Thad turned to look at.Diego, "How long until you can start dropping the habs? "

"We'll be in position to put them down over the main landmass in a few minutes. I assume you're not going to want us to wait and make a second pass to see how many have made it down before letting your group punch out?"

"No, with that blast from the sun coming, I'd rather we were down as quickly as possible. As soon as the last of the pods are clear, you guys go ahead and jump. Anything goes wrong, you couldn't help us anyway."

Thad turned to leave, but Diego stopped him with a touch to the arm and said, "May we meet on Earth."

"I hope so." There was no joy in Thad's voice as he spoke and he quickly ran to the elevator.

It was a stupid saying, he thought to himself, jabbing the button for his deck. There was little logic behind it, merely the hope, or faith, that one day the Augies would one day develop to the point where they no longer felt the need to live on a planet. Until then, humans who preferred to remain fully human, and not augment themselves with cybernetic bodies, were forced to push out into the galaxy. Randomly leaping from one solar system to the next, settling on worlds which could sustain human life, but not so similar to the Earth, that the Augies, who were pushing out almost as fast as the Norms, would have an interest in the planet.

Cybernetic bodies were superior to flesh and blood, but harsh environments required long periods of downtime for maintenance. Augies tended to be an impatient lot, and preferred spending their days on activities other than repairing a joint clogged with sand or muck. On marginal worlds, humans could flourish without having to worry about Augies supplanting them. It was far from ideal, but the crew of the Intrepid preferred it to the alternative.

The Earth they had left behind was a chaotic mess, for Norms. They had found themselves increasingly marginalized for years. The number of jobs available to Norms dwindled rapidly as more and more people opted for Augmentation. Nor were the Augies good masters, tending to treat Norms as brain damaged individuals or children, if they noticed them at all.

Premise is epic. Original, which is rare, and it seems like you've put some solid thought into the backstory.

I hesitate even to mention this, considering that the depth and scope you're alluding to means you've probably already thought of it, but you don't strictly have to be so on-the-nose with the exposition here. If you spread it out across a chapter, or even a few, you can still get the information across without it being obvious.

When the jump drive was developed, the Augies saw it as an exclusive technology and refused to allow the Norms to travel on the first interstellar ships. This was, so the Augies claimed, to protect the Norms from the dangers of the unknown. This didn't go over well with the Norms, who pointed out that for the bulk of human history, Norms faced greater unknowns with far less protection than was currently possible.

Eventually, after months of violent protests, the Norms were allowed to leave on segregated ships. This was only briefly mollifying as the Augies quickly began claiming the Earth-like worlds as their own. If a ship of Norms discovered an Earth-like world, Augies showed up soon after and began pushing the Norms out in the same manner an invasive species crowds out native plants on an island.

The Norms tried doing random hops about to different systems, in hopes that the lack of a pattern would prevent the Augies from following them, but this quickly turned out to be ineffective. So did having the mothership remain in the system to attack the Augies as they arrived. Finally, the Norms began colonizing so-called "marginal worlds." These were planets which were less than ideal for human life. They might be around a star which was nearing the end of its life cycle, or they might be planets which could only easily support life after terraforming.

The elevator doors opened on the launch bay and Thad hurried out. He could feel a rumble in his feet which told him that the first of the habs had detatched itself from the ship and was getting ready to do its deorbit burn. A glance at his wrist monitor told him that the pods for wave one were ready to go as soon as the hab was clear of the ship. Wave two was almost ready, the sole pod showing red was the one Marla was in with their children. He had just enough time to check on her and the kids before he had to get in his pod in wave three.

Policy was to split families up into different pods as a caution against something going wrong and losing an entire family. Thad and Marla had chosen to split their family up between waves and not just pods. Thad felt that this would make it easier for the other families to accept the necessity of dividing families up. If the ship could spend more than just a few hours in a system, this wouldn't really be necessary. They would have ample to time to investigate a planet, as well as do a full pre-flight inspection of the pods and habs before launch.

Unfortunately, the need to make random jumps prevented them from sending advance probes to check out potential planets before the ship arrived. This meant that if they jumped into a system and found a planet that looked promising they had to scramble to land on it, and couldn't be bothered to worry about what the weather was like on it at the moment.

So, they dropped to a planet and hoped to survive. There were always some losses. Either from something on the planet which was more dangerous than they thought, or from equipment failures. It was, however, far better than joining the ranks of the Augies, or spending the entirity of one's life locked up in a metal shell. Humans, even Augies it seemed, did better on planets than they did in artificial environments. Humans could readily toss out thousands of years of living in civilization, but the billions of years spent evolving on a planet was not something which could be tossed away quite so easily while still remaining human.

Groups had tried, of course, to live in vast ships with environments that closely mimicked the natural world, but they invariably broke down at some point. Minor behavioral problems became amplified in each subsequent generation, quickly reducing the populations inside to paranoid, gibbering idiots. It became evident that humans needed planets and if the Earth-like worlds were too difficult to protect from the Augies, then the marginal ones would have to do.

Thad didn't wait for the elevator doors to finish opening and raced into the launch bay. Marla's pod was his first stop, where his daughter stood at the hatch waiting for him excitedly.

"Daddy!" She squealed.

"Hey, pumpkin." He scooped her up in his arms. "Let's get you strapped in. We don't have much time."

Carrying her through the air lock, he walked quickly over to her seat, paying just enough attention to her babbling to nod and make agreeable sounds in the appropriate pauses. Marla's eyes were twinkling with amusement as she watched Thad. Alison was an excitable girl, and the flurry of activity needed to get everything ready for the trip down had wound her up to new heights.

"Ok. You're all strapped in." He kissed her on the forehead and looked into her eyes. "Now, promise me you'll be a good girl and do exactly what mommy tells you to do."

"I will, daddy!" She nodded her head so vigorously that it seemed her neck was made of rubber.

Turning to Marla, he smiled nervously at her, which she returned with an equally nervous smile. The two of them both knew that drops were risky, but had agreed not to discuss the subject in front of Alison since she was so young that it would be impossible for her to understand what was happening. All she knew was that they were finally going to have a home on a planet.

"You know," Marla purred softly as she pulled Thad towards her. "I am looking forward to having you back."

"You are?" Thad felt Marla's hands touching his lower regions and hoped that no one else in the pod noticed he was becoming aroused.

"You remember what the group's charter says." She drew him closer. "Once we're down on the planet, Harrison becomes the group leader until we're able hold elections, that neither of you can sit for. So, you won't be gone all the time for meetings and all the other things that have been taking up your time since we've been aboard ship. And we can finally --"

She broke off abruptly, a broad, mischievous grin formed on her face. Then she leaned forward, whispered in his ear, as an astonished expression rapidly took over Thad's face. He didn't have time to respond as the speaker crackled to life behind him.

"Thad," it was the Science Officer speaking.

"Yeah."

"Figured it was you holding up the works. Listen, there's a big mass of charged particles from that sun headed this way. Its due to get here in about thirty minutes."

"Thirty minutes? Holy shit! How's come you guys didn't notice that before?"

"It wasn't there before. I've never seen anything like it before, and neither have any of the other guys in the department. But if you guys are going to drop, you've got to do it soon. I don't know what something this massive is going to do to the electronics and I'd hate to be hanging around here when it hits."

"What about the folks already down, are they going to be safe?"

"The planet's magnetic field is strong enough that they won't get anything too serious. Communications will probably be difficult for a while, but I'd expect things to clear up in a week at the latest."
"How do we know that this isn't a regular occurrence? I'd hate to get down there and find out that we're going to be stuck in the Stone Age one week out of every month."

"I've pulled up the records we've got on this star and they don't show anything like this happening before. Its probably a once in a five hundred years or so event. We like to think of stars as being relatively stable objects, but even our own sun has done some pretty crazy stuff over the centuries."

"I'd better go." Thad kissed Marla, waved at Alison, and raced out the door.

His pod was a dozen meters away and as he ran, he could feel the deck under his feet shuddering as the flotilla of pods in the second wave detatched themselves from the hull and boosted away from the ship.

"Hey folks!" He greeted everyone as he rushed into his pod and rapidly began strapping himself in. "We're probably going to be in for a bumpy ride. There's a big mass of charged particles headed our way. Double check your restraints and I'll give the all clear signal so we can get out of here."

It took only a moment for the rest of the group to say they were ready. Thad flipped the necessary switches to start the autopilot and signal the bridge that they were ready, then he flipped open the comm to talk to the science officer.

"What's it looking like?"

"Bad," there was a moments hesitation before the science officer spoke. "We're going to be cutting it a bit close on your drop."

As if to emphasize the speed at which they needed to get out of there, a large rumble sounded as the final hab was released, followed quickly by a smaller rumble, indicating that they had released the first of the pods in the final wave.

"We're dropping you guys as quick as we can and as soon as your pod is released, we're moving out of here. Don't bother with an in orbit check, just get yourselves down. We won't be around to help you. As soon as your pod's out of range of the field effect of the drive, we're jumping."

"Copy that." Thad replied as he switched on the main viewing screen so he could get a look at the mass of charged particles heading towards them. He then flipped the override switch for the in orbit system check.

On the viewscreen, the cloud of charged particles flared and swirled in a rapid pattern. Bursting brighter in random shapes, then fading away as some other portion of space lit up. Most of the particles were invisible at this point, he knew, but he didn't need to look at the stream of data coming from the other sensors to know that this was very bad.

"Good luck," Thad heard the science officer say, then there was a series of muffled thumps as the clamps holding the pod in place released, followed immediately by a sharp kick as the pod's main engine kicked into life.

Cheering erupted in the pod as the other passengers celebrated. The cheers were quickly silenced as alarm bells began to sound. Thad furiously began scanning his screens trying to find the source of the problem.

"Shit!" He shouted. "They're jumping too soon! We're caught in their drive field! I'm going to try to move us away from them."

He punched in override commands and there was a moderate pressure on their backs as the main drive cut in. This faded away as the inertial dampers cut in. A glance told him that they had been pulled outside the planet's Van Allen belts. They were still going to be outside the belts when the storm hit in a few moments.

"We're clear," he said calmly. "But its going to be a bumpy ride. We're not going to make it down before the storm gets here."

Thad sat silent as the others chattered with one another. None of them had any idea of what was going to happen to them when the particles hit the pod. It could completely overwhelm the systems, or kill them with lethal doses of radiation, or perhaps nothing at all. The electronics were, perhaps, the most vulnerable to the effects. Certainly they were the most critical.

He ran a few calculations. If he shut down the engines, they would reach the atmosphere of the planet only about 15 minutes later than if they kept them on. Under normal circumstances, restarting the engines wouldn't be a problem. If the electrical system was gone, then they might not be able to restart. Of course, with no electrical system, the engines would be unlikely to function anyway, so it didn't really matter if they were on or not.

It seemed obvious that there was only one thing to do: Shutdown all systems, save for one backup for the sensors, so they could monitor the storm and wait to see if anything still worked after it had passed. Fingers flying, he began the shutdown sequence, killing everything.

"What are you doing?" Rita asked.
"I'm cutting off power to everything but the auxiliary sensors."

"Why?" This came from Rita's boyfriend, a big brute of a man named Chang. Had they been married, they would have been split up like the other married couples, but since they were only dating, they got to stay together. Thad had the suspicion that they were only unmarried because they didn't want to be split up on the way down. He had no way to prove it, so they got to stay together.

"There's a good chance that this storm will fry the electronics if they're left on when it hits." The main lighting flicked off as he spoke. All that was left was the glow from his display panel and the faint blue lights from the emergency lights.

"What if you can't turn everything back on again?" Chang's voice was flirting with an angry tone.

"Then we're just as dead as we would be if I had left everything on when the storm hit."

"Can't you just make the pod go faster?"

"These things are made for short hops, not speed. If we hadn't been caught in the Intrepid's wake, we'd be down by now."

"There's got to be something that --"

"Hang on!" Thad's shout cut Chang's comment short. An instant later, there was a strong lurch to the pod as the storm hit.

They could feel the pod being buffeted about by the shock wave from the storm. Some of the lights came on, flashing in a weird rhythm in response to the energy being dumped into the systems by the storm. Alarms began sounding wildly, and only some of them responded to Thad's efforts to shut them off. Someone was shouting, "Shit!" over and over again. Thad didn't know who it was, and was too busy trying to silence the alarms and read the error messages to try and figure out who was the one shouting. The pod was making ominous groaning sounds.

The readings showing up on his display were little more than gibberish. It was the storm, overloading the electrical system, that was causing this. Systems which he knew to be powered down, would suddenly spring to life on the screen, show an impossible reading, and then die out just as quickly. He desperately wanted to try and run a diagnostic on everything, but he knew such an idea was foolish until the storm had passed by. A faint smell of burning electronics was beginning to fill the pod.

The pod began to shudder violently. Thad scanned the instruments, though he figured it would be a fruitless task. How could he trust any of the readings? Even if he found some that he thought he could trust, there wasn't much he could do. If he attempted to turn on a system, the increased voltage would almost certainly fry the electronics before he could accomplish anything. Assuming that there was something that he could do.

Still, he checked, as it gave himself something to occupy his time, and it might prove fruitful. Besides, he might be able to figure out how close they were to the planet and its protective Van Allen belts. Once they passed through those, he'd be able to switch the systems back on, assuming they were still working, and bring the pod in for a landing. Hopefully, they'd be able to land close to their hab. He didn't relish the idea of having to make a long march on an unknown world, or waiting for someone to come looking for them.

As he suspected, the instruments were useless at providing a coherent picture of what was going on. He speculated that the storm might have caused the maneuvering thrusters to simultaneously fire, which would explain the shuddering, but there wasn't anything he could do about it. If the visual images on the displays were at all trustworthy, then they appeared to still be heading in the direction of the planet, so they could expect to pass through the Van Allen belts soon.

"Why is the pod shaking?" Rita demanded.

"I think the storm's causing the thrusters to fire." Thad replied quickly. He mulled over the idea of being more forthcoming with what was going on, but he wasn't sure if saying that "shit's happening" and "I don't know what to do about it" would be all that comforting.

"Can't you shut them off?"

"They're supposed to be off now. I don't know what I can do to shut them down."

"How we're going to get to the planet, then?"

"We're in the planet's field of gravity. We'll come down, even without the thrusters. Its just a question of where and when. Until we get inside the Van Allen belts, and they cut the impact of the storm, I can't hazard a guess at anything or do much of anything. There's a failsafe landing system, so even if we're unable to control the pod, it'll land safely."

He was about to remind Rita that the failsafe system didn't rely on power or electronics, so that if nothing worked on the pod, they didn't have to worry about winding up as a smoking pile of rubble at the bottom of a crater, but there was a rapid series of muffled explosions from inside the pod.

"What's that?" Someone shouted. Thad couldn't identify the voice over the din.

"I don't know!" He responded. "Everyone! Look around and see if you can tell where its coming from! Don't get out of your seats! We don't know if this thing is going to toss us around or not!"

"I think its coming from the weapons locker!" An anonymous voice shouted. "I can see smoke leaking out the door!"

"We should be okay, then!" Thad tried to sound comforting. "The locker's strong enough to contain the explosion of everything going off at once. Let's just hope that we don't meet any nasty life forms when we get down there!"

Out of the corner of his eye, Thad noticed that the readings on his displays seemed to be settling down. Perhaps they'd hit the planet's Van Allen belts, or maybe the storm was passing. He studied the readouts carefully. No point in getting everyone excited until he knew for certain what was going on, and he wanted to have some kind of idea of what might be wrong with the pod before he said anything.

It didn't appear to be much of an improvement, however, he decided after a few minutes. There were several systems which appeared to be off-line, even though he tried repeatedly to power them back up. The main engines were also out, with only half the thrusters responding. He could get them to the planet, but a precision landing was out of the question, because of that, and it didn't really matter as the sensor array was gone. Probably burned up by the storm. Unless they got really lucky, they were going to wind up a long ways away from any of the habs.

At some point, the other groups would come looking for them. It all just depended upon what kind of shape they were in when they touched down as to when that would be. The pod had enough supplies to keep them going for a month, so figuring out what was safe to eat on the planet wouldn't be a priority. The question was just of when they could expect rescue, and that was something that Thad had no way of answering. They had no idea how long the storm would disrupt communications and what kind of shape the other groups were in.

The only thing Thad didn't have to worry about was if the landing systems were still intact. While coming in under power was the preferred way, the pods were designed to get their passengers down as safely as possible using a variety of methods. Automated controls could bring the pod down if the crew were incapacitated, if the pod had lost all power, mechanical systems which required no electricity were designed to deploy a multitude of parachutes if the pod's descent rate failed to slow as the atmosphere thickened. Even landing on water wouldn't be an issue, as the pod could float.

"Ok, folks!" Thad announced loudly. "Here's the deal: We hit atmosphere in about 30, I've got almost no control of where we put down, because it looks like the main engines are out, along with the sensors. We'll have to let the 'chutes bring us in, so things are going to get bumpy. I want everybody to unstrap and start inspecting the pod in case I've missed something because of a bad readout. Be back in your seats in 20, and strap in tight. We'll start trying to figure out what to do about rescue once we get down."

The pod filled with the sound of harnesses being unlatched, and soft talking between the colonists. Thad was relieved, he'd worried that Rita or Chang would protest not worrying about the rescue when they were down. Presumably, they'd decided to keep their mouth shut, figuring that there was no point in asking questions, since once they hit planet, Thad's duties as leader were over. For his part, Thad would be more than happy to let go of his authority now that things weren't going to plan. Even though he enjoyed being group leader, dealing with Rita and Chang after a bad landing was going to be a nightmare, and he would have felt sorry for whomever took his place, but he had a feeling it was going to be Chang. After Rita had browbeat the rest of those in the pod into agreeing to it. If either of the two of them met with an "accident" before rescue, Thad wasn't going to push too hard for there to be an investigation into the matter once they were picked up. He might have wondered if this was some kind of character flaw on his part, but he'd dealt with the two of them for too long to do anything more than hope they didn't suffer too much if someone decided to kill them.

As he surmised, the inspections turned up a few minor problems not revealed by the readouts. If there had been time, he would have considered fixing them, but they had no way to put the pod into orbit, so Thad had everyone strap back in, and they waited to hit atmosphere. His mind drifted to wondering what Marla and Alison were up to. Their pod should be down by now. If they had managed to touchdown close to their hab, they'd no doubt be inside of it, watching the scanners to see what was happening with the other pods. No way of knowing how well the scanners would be working with all the charged particles hitting the atmosphere. Unless the interference was particularly bad, however, the habs could send up drones to search close to the habs. Once the storm cleared up, they could begin sending up various satellites, which would be able to spot Thad's pod quickly. Assuming that the interference did only last about a week, they shouldn't have to wait too long for rescue.

A soft chime interrupted Thad's thoughts. They'd entered the atmosphere. A slight vibration began to make itself known to those inside the pod, as the air thickened rapidly outside. By now, a plasma field was beginning to form around the pod, and sacrificial parts of the heat shield would be burning away.

Since Thad had no control over the descent, the heat from the plasma shifted mechanisms into place for the failsafe descent system. A large, heat resistant streamer was released from the top of the pod. As it was tugged upwards, this sprung open small panels covering the windows on the gumdrop shaped pod's top, allowing the sickly light of their new home in.

These panels had protected the windows on their way to the planet, now, in the atmosphere, they acted as air brakes. Not to slow the pod to any significant degree, but to pry the covering off the top of the pod. Once this was released, it was fed out on a long, carbon nanotube cable until it extended several hundred meters above the pod, which triggered the release of the first in a series of ever larger ring shaped parachutes that deployed at similar distances. The engineers who'd worked on the design had referred to it as a "Christmas tree" since the final appearance greatly resembled one.

Each parachute deployment jerked the pod slightly, and Thad counted them to occupy his mind. They were large enough that in all but the thinnest of atmospheres, they could slow a pod's descent so that it was traveling only a few kilometers an hour when it touched down. The heat shield of the pod was a carbon aerogel that could act as a shock absorber if, for some reason the pod came down harder than expected. In a water landing, the foam would keep the pod afloat until it could be towed to shore.

The designers had assumed, however, that the pod would be coming down over a relatively flat area. Unfortunately, Thad had only been able point the pod in the general direction of the planet's largest landmass before the thrusters gave out. Their final course brought them down in one of the largest mountain ranges on the planet. They touched down, not on a relatively flat surface at a gentle pace of a few klicks per hour, but at a bone jarring 20 kilometers per hour, several thousand meters up the side of a mountain.

The impact forced painful grunts out of everyone in the pod as it slammed them into their seats. Thad's arms were thrown across the controls, one of his hands hitting the lever controlling the mechanism which was designed to shear off the paracords. The parachutes began to drift away, and the pod started to shift, then began rapidly tilting to one side.

"Hang on!" Thad shouted.

The pod began tumbling, the overhead windows showing flashes of sky, followed by large plants, then the ground, and then the sky again. The passengers were thrown against their restraints, then the seats, and then back into the restraints. Thad furiously dug his fingers between the restraints and his shoulders in a futile attempt to ease the pain. Several clouds of vomit filled the air and then splattered against the walls and windows of the pod. Thad caught a flash of a large rock outcropping before the pod slammed violently into it, stopping after what had seemed an eternity of violent bouncing, but in reality was only a few moments.

Thad hung in his restraints, gasping for breathing, listening to the other passengers do the same or vomit. He wasn't sure what was worse, the pain from being slammed around in his seat or the disorientation caused from the tumbling. Feebly, without really thinking about what he was doing, he fumbled with the release on his restraints, and then fell some two meters to what was now the "floor" of the pod.

"Fuck, that hurt." He gasped, forcing his aching body erect. A few other people were doing the same, he noticed. "Stay in your seats! We don't know how stable our position is, and I don't want to think about what will happen if we start rolling again. Once I've had a look to make sure we're stable, then those of us who're out of our seats will help the rest of you get down."

The hull of the pod was ringed with airlocks at five meter intervals, Thad staggered over to one that was hopefully high enough off the ground that he'd be able to get outside, opened the inner door and crawled inside. He then closed the inner door, struggled over to the locker where the breathing apparatus was stored, pulled one out and put it on, then started the lock cycling.

The planet's atmosphere was breathable, but thin, and Thad had no idea how high up they might be, so he didn't want to take any chances of oxygen starvation. He lay on the bulkhead, feeling the aches in his body as he waited for the pressure to equalize and the outer door to open. Adrenaline was supposed to dull the pain, he thought. If I'm hurting this bad now, what am I going to feel like when it wears off?

Tumbling out of the airlock door, he wobbled to his feet and looked around at their new home. It was a wretched landscape before him. They were still high up in the mountains, but the ground before them seemed to slope away fairly gently, so if they had to walk down, it didn't look like it would be too arduous a trek. At the base of the mountain lay a great plain stretching away in the distance as far as he could see. If there was any kind of plant life, or sources of water, he couldn't see it. Nor could he spot any signs of the hab or any of the other pods. Clouds of what appeared to be piss colored dust obscured much of his view of the plains.

"God, what a shitty looking planet." he gasped.

Turning around, he began to examine the pod. It was wedged firmly up against the rock outcropping he'd seen from the inside just before they stopped tumbling. The pod might shift as they moved around, but it seemed unlikely that they'd be sent on another wild ride down the mountain. There seemed to be enough loose stones in the area that they could pile them up to prevent the pod from moving, so they'd have a stable, if uncomfortable home, until they could be rescued.

Looking up the slope of the mountain, he saw the crumpled shape of their parachutes, and the scar where they'd first touched down. He gave up trying to estimate how far they'd fallen after a few minutes, as he was still too jarred from the landing to think clearly. Besides, he realized, it wasn't really all that important. They might want to send a party up the mountain to get the parachutes, since their orange and white patterns would make it easier to spot them from a distance, but that was something for someone else to worry about. They were down, and as soon as everyone was unstrapped from their seats, and the pod was shored up, his duties as leader were over.

Returning to the inside of the pod, Thad found that most people had listened to him and remained strapped in. He sat himself down heavily on the floor, pulled the breathing apparatus off his face, and looked up at everyone.

"Good news, folks," he gasped. "It looks like we're in pretty good shape, even if we're sitting at a weird angle. I think its safe for folks to start getting out of their seats. I don't recommend taking a fall like I did, though. That was pretty painful. Those of you who feel up to it when you're down, need to go outside. While I don't think there's much chance of the pod shifting, there's a bunch of rocks out there that we can wedge around the pod to keep it from moving."

Thad sat for a moment longer, and then got to his feet to begin helping people down. The pod held a crew of one hundred, and about a dozen folks had already gotten down. The sooner everyone was down and they had the pod immobilized, the sooner he could resign his position of group leader.

It took just over two hours to accomplish everything, and Thad was relieved to discover that there were no injuries more serious than some bruising. Night was coming on outside the pod, and someone had set up the portable shelters, as well as gathered up plant material to build a bonfire. They ate their rations, gathered around the fire, drinking from the wine that Thad had brought along to celebrate their landing on a new world. Above them, auroras danced and flicked across the sky, chasing one another in multicolored displays of the power of the solar storm's energy.

Thad waited until most of them had finished eating, before standing up to speak.

"As you know," he said, feeling the warmth of the wine in him. "Our charter calls for me to step down once we're safely on the planet. I'll be the first to admit that its a shitty looking planet, and that we're nowhere near the hab, but we're down, we're safe, and that means I'm out of a job. Harrison's the new leader, but he's probably curled up in his hab, taking a nap."

There was a smattering of laughter at this comment.

"That being said, until we're rescued, our pod has no leader, which means that we're going to need to pick one. I've no interest in doing the job any more, so even if I wasn't blocked by the charter, I wouldn't want to continue on. So, whomever wants the job can have it, if the group agrees. I'm not going make suggestions for anyone, because I don't want people to think I'm trying to influence the decision, and I promise to support whomever you pick."

"I don't see why you can't keep doing the job, since we're probably going to be rescued in the morning." Rita's tone betrayed a false innocence on her part. "But if we have to pick someone else, I nominate my boyfriend Chang."

Indistinct mutterings flashed around in the darkness. Thad couldn't tell if they were approving or disapproving in tone, but he wasn't surprised that Rita had been the first to nominate someone.

"I nominate Foucault." A voice said. Foucault was a biologist, so Thad thought that it was a good choice.

Eventually, they had a half a dozen nominees, and after much debating, a series of votes was taken, with Chang narrowly getting the nomination. Thad happily turned his duties over to Chang, announced he was going to bed, and crawled into a shelter, falling asleep almost immediately.

You've lost track of whether there's plant life or not in your narrative. You claim in one spot that none is visible but then make references to it in several others. /nitpick

Lack of clarity on my part. There's plants on the mountain, but do not appear to be any on the plains. (Naked eye viewing on Thad's part, there could be grass-like plants, but they're not visible to him.)

He dreamt of Marla. It was one of their first dates, they had gone to an amusement park for the afternoon. What they had done, he couldn't remember, but he could see her, eyes flashing, hair blowing in the breeze, as she teasingly told him what she intended to do to him on one of the rides. He reached up to stroke her face, and then the dream shifted to them being in the cramped quarters onboard the ship. They were in bed, talking softly, hoping that their lovemaking earlier hadn't woken Alison, sleeping in the next room. They were moving into position for another round, when Alison opened the door and bounced onto the bed, blissfully unaware of what she was interrupting.

Thad knew that he was dreaming, but it seemed so real to him, that he wondered if he couldn't let go of that part of him which recognized that it was a dream, and somehow slip into the memory so completely that it became real. To be a real life Billy Pilgrim and become unstuck in time. If he could spend eternity with Marla and Alison in that bed, at that moment, would be bliss.

It was all ripped away from him by someone screaming loudly. He jerked awake, his heart pounding in his chest, and his ears ringing. At first, he lay there, gasping, trying to get over the shock of being disturbed, then he wondered what he should do. He was no longer the group leader, so it wasn't imperative that he investigate, but at the same time, he realized that his help might be needed.

Staggering out of the shelter, he found everyone staring into the dark at what appeared to be numerous pairs of glowing eyes. Without thinking, he raced over to the fire, grabbed what seemed to be a branch, and threw it at the pair of eyes closest to him.

The branch burned brighter as it moved through the air, tumbling awkwardly. For a moment, they got a look at one of the creatures which was staring at them. It had a nearly spherical head, covered in long, stringy like fur, large eyes, and a nearly Cheshire cat-like grin. It stood on its hind legs, the forelegs ending in nearly hand-like paws with large claws. The size of the creature was difficult to determine, as its body was covered in more stringy fur, but Thad estimated it must have been close to three meters long, and weighed somewhere around 250 kilos.

As the branch touched the ground, bursting into sparks, the creature opened its mouth, revealing a series of long teeth, emitted a noise unlike anything Thad had ever heard, and fled into the night, using a gait which was a strange mixture of running and hopping. The other animals quickly followed suit.

Chaos broke out in the camp, as everyone in a rush to decompress from the tension they felt, began talking rapidly. Thad scanned the various figures to see if he could spot Chang. Chang was in charge, and should be giving orders, but Thad wasn't able to see him in all the confusion. Had something happened to him?

No sign of Rita, either. This wasn't good. They needed to be preparing in case the creatures returned, and that was unlikely to happen unless someone started giving orders. That person should be Chang. Thad didn't want to be the one to start getting everyone organized, because that would lead to accusations of him trying to reassert control. It would be especially problematic if Chang or Rita appeared while he was giving orders. They'd accuse him of trying to usurp control, but if he didn't act soon, then it would be that much harder to get them motivated when Chang did show up.

"Uh, people!" He shouted after he waited as long as he dared for Chang to show himself. "I don't know where Chang is, but it seems pretty obvious to me that if we don't do something, we could be in danger."

The group quickly quieted down in response to his comments, and turned to face him.

"Rik Rik!" Thad pointed to the botanist. "When I'm done speaking, I want to you to get a head count of everyone who's here. I don't see Chang or Rita, so we're missing at least two people. I don't want to be missing any more.

"Since it seems we've met some of the natives, and since they may or may not be friendly, I suggest that we take some precautions. From now on, if you're going to be outside, have at least one buddy with you at all times. That way, if these things have decided that we're tasty, there's a better chance of defending yourself.

"As you heard me say, I want Rik Rik to do a head count. After he's counted you, I want everyone over the age of 18, who's not taking care of a child to start gathering up plant material. Don't stray more than a few meters from here, and don't go anywhere where you can't see the fire. If these creatures are anything like those back on Earth, they're not going to be big fans of fire. If you see anything that can be used to make a weapon, long sticks, flint, or what have you, bring it back here immediately, otherwise, gather at least two arm loads of material before you go to bed.

"Tony," he pointed to one of the engineers. "I want you to grab someone and see if you two can rig some lights up. I don't care what you guys have to tear up in the pod to do it, but unlike our guests, we can't see very well in the dark, and I'll feel better if we've got this area well lit."

"Can't we just sleep in the pod?" A woman asked. "We'll probably be rescued in the morning."

"I don't trust the life support system on the pod. The storm fried a lot of systems and even if we got a clean diagnostic report, I wouldn't trust it to keep us alive all night. The shelters should be strong enough to keep those things out, so everybody sleeps in one tonight. We'll keep two hour watches in pairs, going in alphabetical order after the first watch. When you tag your relief, make sure that they're up and by the fire before you go to bed. We're all pretty tired after today's events, and it'd be easy to fall back asleep. Rik Rik and I will take the first watch."

"What about Chang and Rita, and anyone else who might be missing? Are we going to look for them?" Tony asked.

"If we find suitable weapons, and if the flashlights in the pod still work, then I'll let a few pairs of people go out and do a search. If not, then its going to have to wait until morning."

"But what if they're hurt?" Amanda, one of the nurses, asked.

"Won't do them much good if we all get hurt looking for them in the dark." He replied. "If they haven't turned up by dawn, then we'll send everybody out to look for them. It sucks, I know, its the safest option we have right now. Any other questions?"

"Do those of us with kids have to stand watch?" This came from Athena, the software engineer who had two small children.

"Only if there's someone you trust to watch the kids, and you want to do it. Otherwise, you stay in a shelter with your kids. If there's no other questions..." Thad's voice trailed off and he waited a moment before continuing to speak. "All right, check in with Rik Rik, and then get to work."

The head count revealed that only Chang and Rita were missing. Thad and Rik Rik occupied their time on watch by sharpening the ends of some of the sticks that had been gathered, and keeping the bonfire going. It was uncomfortably warm so close to the fire, but they had to stay close to it, in order to keep it going. The material people gathered wasn't the best for burning, and perhaps the thinner atmosphere was causing some problems. Thad didn't notice the air being too thin, but effects of hypoxia were subtle, and might have been missed. He wasn't sure what they should do in the morning. Going down the mountain would give them more oxygen, but would make them harder to find by a rescue party, since the chutes on the mountain were designed to be highly visible, and thus stood out as a marker for anyone looking for them.

Of course, if there was still heavy radio interference, the habs would be unlikely to send out rescue parties very far, as the only communication possible would be via line of sight tight beams. There were the automated drones, but, again, heavy radio interference would significantly reduce their usefulness. Even heavily shielded electronics were completely immune, and until the colony was able to get GPS and mapping satellites up, their ability to navigate would be limited. Keeping watch for either drones or search craft would be valuable, since it would help show Thad and the others the likely direction in which one of the habs could be found.

Tony managed to get some lights rigged up fairly quickly, and once he accomplished that, Thad set him to handing out the few flashlights that were still working and stripping the pod of anything that could be refashioned into a weapon. Near the end of his watch, Shakuntala, one of the planetary engineers, came up to him, with her search partner Sergy, another planetary engineer. The look on their faces was troubled.

"Thad, you had better come see this." Shakuntala's voice was low, and she glanced around as she spoke. "I think we found Chang and Rita. What's left of them, that is."

"Shit." Thad looked at Sergy and Rik Rik. "Go get our reliefs. Apologize for it being early, explain to them that there's been an emergency. Don't tell either one of them what it is, and don't let anyone else know. We keep this to ourselves until I'm certain that it is them."

Rik Rik and Sergy ran off, and Thad turned back to Shakuntala.

"Okay, tell me what you found. You don't have to go into too many details if you don't want to, but how do you know that its them?"

"Sergy and I were looking in that direction," she pointed her flashlight behind her in the darkness to illustrate. "For something to burn, and we saw what looked like foot prints, so we followed them, thinking that they might show us where Chang and Rita went. Then we saw some kind of animal prints. I'm guessing that they belong to the ones we saw earlier. I suppose we should have stopped and come back then, but we kept going, and then there was blood. Blood everywhere."

Shakuntala paused, gasping. Thad rubbed her arms, trying to comfort her.

"Its okay," he told her. "You don't have to say any more if you don't want to."

"No, no, you have to know." Shakuntala shook her head. "There was part of a body left, I don't know who's it was, but it belonged to an Augie!"

"That's impossible," Thad said, though he had a queasy feeling in his stomach. "Everybody's completely screened at routine intervals to make sure they're not an Augie."

"And Rita did the screening!" Shakuntala hissed loudly.

Thad covered his eyes with the palms of his hands, hanging his head in shame.

"Well, that would explain why she and Chang were such pains in my ass." He said finally. "One of them was an Augie, and the other was covering for them. I'd have to check the records, but I bet that the person who screened Rita was Chang."

Thad attempted to pace casually, not wanting to alert the few other folks beside the fire, sharpening long sticks, that something was amiss. Were there other Augies in the group? On the Intrepid? Did this happen on other ships? How could he warn the other ships, and those left back on Earth?

His thoughts were interrupted by Rik Rik, Sergy, and their reliefs showing up.

"Sorry to drag you out here, but its a bit of an emergency. We'll fill you in when we get back." He told them and then grabbed one of the sharpened sticks. "Take one of these, and then Sergy and Shakuntala, show Rik Rik and I what you've found."

The four of them ran into the darkness, with Sergy leading the way. Thad's mind whirled over possibilities of what they could about this. It would help if they knew what was happening with the solar storm and their communications. Assuming everything cleared up by morning, they could expect rescue in a couple of hours, but if the effects of the storm were still disrupting communications, then there was no way of knowing when they might be rescued. And no way of knowing what the other Augies on the planet, if any, were doing.

Thad barely noticed the animal prints on the ground, he was so lost in thought, but snapped out of it when he saw the blood. It was splattered all over the ground and the plants, it seemed to be too much to have come from just a pair of humans. Had the Augie managed to kill one of the animals before the others attacked him?

Shakuntala and Sergy both stopped and turned to face Thad and Rik Rik.

"They're just up ahead. We'd rather not go any farther." Sergy said.

"I understand." Thad took the flashlight from Sergy, gestured for Rik Rik to follow him, and the two of them walked to where Sergy indicated the remains were located.

It didn't seem possible, but there was even more blood in this area. As he swept the area with the flashlight beam, Thad to pause and suppress the urge to gag. Bones, and pieces of bones were scattered everywhere, and there was a strong stench in the air. He noticed that Rik Rik was having a similar reaction. If the Augie had successfully killed one of the animals, Thad couldn't tell from what was left, if any of the bones weren't human. He had his head turned in what he was certain was going to be a futile attempt to keep the contents of his stomach down, when Rik Rik called out.

"There! I see it, Thad! Look at that spinal column!" Rik Rik pointed towards what was obviously a spinal column made from carbon nanotubes, with metallic pieces embedded in it. At one end of the column was a shadowy lump, that could have been a head, or it might just be a trick of the light. One of them would have to get close to it to be certain.

Thad gestured that he'd go and take a closer look. Staggering towards the spinal column, he tried not to think as to what was making the ground muddy under his feet. He'd nearly reached the column, when his stomach rebelled and violently projected its contents from Thad's body. In between gasps, he could hear Rik Rik starting to retch in response to Thad's vomiting.

Thad took several deep breaths, and clamped down on his jaws. If they were going to have a chance of making it back to the pod, he was going to have to grab the remains of the Augie and take them where they could be examined. He forced himself close enough to the spinal column to reach it. Turning his head back towards Rik Rik, he blindly reached in the direction of the column.

It took a few tries before his fingers felt it. Gasping the column, he began grunting rapidly like a weightlifter, as he picked the column up and forced his stomach to hold onto its remaining meager contents. Standing upright, noticed that it weighed several kilos. He didn't have any idea of what a flesh and bone equivalent should weigh, but it seemed heavy to him.

Next, he steeled himself to look and make sure he had what he needed. Given that the spinal column of the Augie had been replaced, it was a certainty that whomever it had belonged to, hadn't gone for any genetic enhancements. Some Augies preferred to keep many of their original parts, while others opted for a fully synthetic body and brain. Tampering with the spinal column was rarely done unless one opted for a full replacement, as recovery times were so long with the kind of intensive surgery needed replace just a section of the spinal column. That meant there was a computerized brain inside the skull, and they could potentially get some answers out of it. He just needed to know if the section of the spine he was holding connected to the skull, and he wanted to see if he could identify who it was who had betrayed them.

It wasn't as bad as he expected, when he looked at the skull. The flesh seemed to be intact on two thirds of the face, and for some reason, that didn't inspire him to want to vomit, as he thought he would. He turned back towards Rik Rik.

"Chang." He said. "Chang was the Augie. Let's go. You can walk ahead of me, if you don't want to see this."

"Here." Rik Rik removed his shirt and tossed it at Thad. "Wrap it up in this, that way nobody will see it."

"Good idea." Thad quickly wrapped the body parts in Rik Rik's ample shirt, the blood and other fluids soaking through the cloth.

They rejoined Sergy and Shakuntala, with Thad explaining to them that Chang was the Augie, and admonishing them to not tell anyone about this.

"I don't like it any more than you do," Thad said in reply to Sergy's protests. "But I don't want people to panic. I promise you, they'll all be told in the morning, once I've had a chance to figure some things out. Right now, we don't know much of anything, other than Chang was an Augie. There could be others, if that's the case, I want to be prepared."

"How do we know you're not an Augie, and you're not trying to protect the others in the group?" Shakuntala demanded.

"Look, we don't have time for these kinds of paranoid games." Thad's voice was riddled with frustration and fatigue. "I can't stop you from telling people, but right now, if you want to be picky about it, the only person any one of us can trust as not being an Augie, is ourself. We've got no idea if any of the others around us are Augies or not.

"What happens if the first person you tell when you get to camp is an Augie? Will they let you live, or will they try and kill you to keep it a secret? Who knows? But you'll go crazy trying to figure it out. The only thing that makes sense is for the four of us to stick together, until we've had a chance to get some more answers. Now, if anything happens to one of us, then it would make sense to call a group meeting and blab to everyone, no matter if we've figured out a solution or not.

"But unless that happens, we need to keep this to ourselves, so that people don't panic unnecessarily. We have no idea when we're going to be rescued, and I don't intend for us to go all 'Lord of the Flies' on one another before that happens. If we stay calm, we will get through this, no matter how many Augies there might be among us."

"We have to tell them something," Rik Rik said. "People are already concerned, and some of them are not happy about you stepping up and taking charge like you did. They think that it should have been put to a vote again, or we should have put Foucault in charge, since he came in second."

"If Foucault had stepped forward when we discovered Chang was missing, I wouldn't have said anything." Thad hoped his voice didn't sound snarky, since he was being sincere. "I tell you what, when we get back to the pod, we'll find Foucault, and get him up to speed on everything. He can assume the leadership duties if he wants them, or we can take another vote and pick someone else. But no matter what, I'm not going to sit around that camp and wait to be rescued. I've got a wife and daughter out there, and there could be other Augies in our group. All of us know what arrogant pricks those guys are, and if we can take them out now, there's a good chance we can hold on to this planet for longer."

"But what do we tell people? Someone's surely going to see that you're carrying something in Rik Rik's shirt." Shakuntala's voice was pointed without being hateful.

"Tell them that its something we found which proves that Chang and Rita are dead." Thad replied after a few minutes thought. "We'll explain everything in a meeting tomorrow morning, and we won't conceal anything from anyone at that meeting. That way, everybody's had some sleep, and Foucault will be up to speed on what's going on. We'll also have had a chance to come up with some ideas about what our next moves are going to be.

"When we get back to camp, I want to find Tony, and have him take a look at Chang's head. The electronics in it should be intact, and we might be able to extract some information from them about who the other Augies are, and if he's reported our location to anyone. You and Sergy can fetch Foucault while Rik Rik and I get Tony and get things set up."

The quartet took off at a fast trot, splitting up once they reached the camp. Rik Rik and Thad quickly found Tony asleep in the pod with the airlock doors open. Foucault took longer to track down, and while they waited, Tony jerry-rigged up a table and assorted connectors, Thad having told him enough of the details to know what they were going to need when.

"Ok, brace yourselves." Thad said after they were all assembled. "I've seen Chang's head with a flashlight, and it was pretty nasty. I imagine that with the better lights of the pod, its going to look even worse."

Tony was the only one looking at the table when Thad unceremoniously dumped Chang's head on to it. Thad then gestured at Rik Rik with the shirt, to ask if Rik Rik still wanted it. Rik Rik shook his head in a vehement no, and Thad tossed the shirt to one side.

"Aw, hell," Tony said, grabbing Chang's head and spinning it around to get a good look at it, and then picking it up by what was left of the spinal column with a greedy expression on his face. "If you ask me, Chang's never looked better!"

Tony spent the next few minutes eying the frayed connectors at the end of the spinal column. Thad and the others took quick glances at Tony and Chang. Not only to try and see what Tony was doing, but also to condition themselves against the sight. Foucault had to stumble to the airlock and retch outside twice, but he was the only "casualty" this time. The rest of them managed to hold on, but just barely.

"I don't think I want to hook him up to the pod's computer," Tony said at last. "Not at first, anyway. I've got no idea what kind of state the chips inside of his head are in. They didn't seem to get too badly fried by the storm, and if he's got advanced circuits, they probably have some self-regenerating capability.

"I'm going to try and throw a few volts into his power leads and see what happens. He should boot right up. If he doesn't, then I'll hook him up to the pod's systems. Less chance of him trying to take over the systems that way."

Tony spent a few moments hooking up some power connectors, then dropped Chang's head on to the table. It was obvious that he was booting up as the facial muscles slowly twitched, and the eyes began rapidly scanning the room. Chang's eyes focused in on Thad.

"I see you've discovered my little secret." He said with a smile.

Liking it so far! One suggestion: "Augies" sounds a little cutesy and non-threatening, even though the surrounding verbiage obviously indicates otherwise. I suggest "Augmen" or "Augmens" instead. Still connotes augmented humans, and in an everyday slang like people might adopt over time, but without the cutesie-ness.

Oh, and I reserve the right to use that term myself in the future, should I ever have the need.

Thanks. I've been too busy to get back to this, but hopefully I'll have things squared away enough that I can get back to it this weekend. I get your point about how the name "Augie" could seem cutesie, but I don't think anyone believed O'Brien on DS9 was being cutesie when he referred to the Cardassians as "Cardies," and I certainly don't think that African-Americans think being called "boy" means that they look young.

Thad and the others stared at Chang for a few minutes. None of them were prepared for this moment. It wasn't simply the fact that a severed head was talking to them, as calmly as if he was sitting in a drawing room, taking a cup of tea that had them quiet. Augies were supposed to let the "norms" emigrate in peace, and while no one bought the claims that the Augies had "just happened" to find the planets that the "norms" had settled on and made viable, it had been assumed that the efforts to prevent the Augies from inserting one of their kind into the colony ships had all been thwarted.

"Come, come," Chang taunted them. "I know you guys are slow, but this is ridiculous. Don't you want to know how I convinced Rita to cover up the fact that I'm augmented?"

"And why weren't you bothered by the storm?" Thad asked.

"Oh, I'll get to that," Chang's voice had a sinister purr to it. "You 'norms' have some serious weaknesses that are easy to exploit. Rita, as you'll recall, was not exactly a pleasant woman, both in terms of personality or appearance. Unlike you 'norms,' I don't need large amounts of alcohol to find someone like her attractive, just a few minor tweaks to one of my subroutines and she became the sexiest woman alive. Which meant I could use my secret weapon on her."

"What's that?" Foucault asked.

"Allow me to demonstrate." Chang's tongue snaked out his mouth, growing several centimeters in the process. It then proceeded to push Chang's head onto its face and began doing a gross imitation of a push up, before rolling it back face up. "With a tongue like that, no woman could resist me. It didn't take long for her to agree to anything that I wanted. I've heard that women aren't alone in falling prey to the power of the almighty tongue."

"The storm. Why didn't it affect you?" Thad's face was twisted into an angry grimace. He knew Chang was toying with them, and he desperately wanted to smash Chang's skull, but he didn't dare, until he was certain they weren't going to get any more information out of him.

"Oh, it affected me," Chang replied. "That's why I didn't bitch about your shitty piloting skills. I let the organic parts of myself take over, and shutdown my electronics. I'm going to miss those brain cells, they were the only original biological parts of me left, and they all died when that thing tore me apart in the woods. Rita, the stupid bitch, died trying to save me from them. She needn't have bothered. I've got a complete backup of myself on Earth, and I'm sure that the animals who ate me are all now suffering from a very bad case of indigestion."

"How many more of you are there?" Shakuntala tried as best as she could to not sound fearful.

"Oh, I've got back up copies of myself on every world we, more advanced, humans have settled on." Chang's voice had a sneering leer to it. "But that's probably not what you meant. You probably want to know how many more of us advanced humans were onboard the ship with you. Surely, even you're not so stupid as to think that I would tell you that. A man has to have his secrets, you know."

Thad reached down, grabbed the power leads, yanked them from Chang's spinal column, and threw Chang's head as hard as he could against the closest bulkhead. He then spun around and began pacing furiously.

"Tony," Thad tried to control his anger. "Can you do a dump of his systems and find out if there's any more of them in the group or not?"

"I don't know," he gestured as he spoke. "If we were at the hab, I'd have the stuff, but I'm not sure if I can rig something up out of the stuff we've got here to do a full extraction, especially with him still being functional. If he's encrypted his systems, then I'd doubt we'd be able to get much of anything."

"And if he weren't functional?"

"I could get some information out of him, even if his system was encrypted or not. How much, I don't know. More at the hab, than I can here, of course, but until I started poking around I wouldn't be able to say for sure. The Augies keep the best components to themselves, so if he's a newer model, I wouldn't be able to get much of anything out of him. If he's about 10 years old, I could get something out of him, might even be able to break his encryption if he's using non-particle chips, and still on the old q-bit chips."

Thad stopped pacing.

"How do we make him non-functional?" Thad's voice was cold.

"You can't do that!" Shakuntala shouted, grabbing Thad's arms. "He might be an Augie, but he's still a thinking being!"

"She's right, Thad." Foucault said. "He's got as much right to live as any of us do. Tearing his skull apart so that we can extract information that he might not even have, assuming we could get to it, might not be murder in the traditional sense, but its still wrong."

"What do you mean, 'information that he might not even have'?" Thad broke free of Shakuntala's grip and stepped in front of Foucault.

"The Augies aren't stupid. It seems that this is an organized plan on their part to infiltrate our ranks so that they can locate planets after we've settled on them and then claim them for themselves. The more people who know about something, the harder it is to keep it a secret."

"But how would Rita know who not to check if Chang didn't tell her?"

"Maybe she got that information from Chang's handlers. Or maybe she got a list of names of people, but only some of them on it were Augies. Or maybe Chang's the only one, and he's just fucking with us."

Thad moved away from Foucault, nodding to himself. He turned, spotted Chang's head on the floor and kicked it into another bulkhead. Chang's head bounced off the bulkhead, and rolled erratically back towards Thad.

"Okay," Thad rubbed his face tiredly. "Tony, you're the best engineer we've got in the pod, and I'm sure that if was possible for you to rig up something to figure out who else was an Augie, using the stuff we've got here, you could do it. But we're all tired and paranoid, and none of us in here are qualified to judge if you're doing the job correctly, so there's no point in asking you to even try."

Thad moved towards the nearest bulkhead and leaned up against it for a moment, before sliding down. Stress and fatigue were getting to him, and he knew it. If they hadn't completely clouded his judgment, they would soon. He wasn't even sure if he should be making decisions at this point, maybe he should turn things over to Foucault. Still, Foucault wasn't taking much of an active role in any of this.

"Anybody know how long it is until sunrise?" Thad asked. Nobody answered. "I'm going to have to get some sleep, but we need an answer to have for the folks in the morning, when everybody's awake. Does anybody have any ideas?"

"Maybe the storm will have dissipated enough in the morning that we can call the hab on the radio." Rik Rik said.

"Take a look at that sky," Thad pointed to the windows in the pod that were pointed skyward. They were filled with dancing lights from high energy particles reacting with the planet's magnetic fields. "We're not on the right part of the planet for us to see those normally. We've got at least another day without communications. Almost all of us, have family out there, on this planet, and we don't know if they're still alive or not. And they could all have Augies in their midst. We have to figure out a way to get word to them, and we have to do it soon."

"You know, in the old days," Foucault said. "Before the invention of radio, ships carried distress rockets that they could fire in times of need."

"Tony, you think you could rig something like that up?"

"If we had some kind of fuel," he replied. "The propellant tanks for the thrusters are empty. Depending upon how much liquid oxygen's left in the life support system, I could use that for an oxidizer, but I'd need some kind of fuel."

"Like what?"

"Ideally, something hydrocarbon based like kerosene, but any kind of flammable liquid would do. I can't promise that it'd be very safe, so we'd want to launch it away from the camp, and I could only do a rough guess as to how high it might go, or how visible it would be."

"What about a solid rocket?" Shakuntala asked. "They were good enough for fireworks."

"Great," Tony's voice was tinged by sarcasm. "All we need is some saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal. Have you seen any?"

"Okay," Thad held up a hand. "We'll see if maybe somebody's got some alcohol in the morning. In the meantime, I'm going to try and catch some sleep before the sun comes up. I suggest the rest of you do the same. Those people out there are going to want some answers in the morning, and we'd better have something for them besides Chang's head."

Thad closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.

When he awoke, there was the glow of the rising sun in the windows above him. His dreams had not been peaceful. They'd been filled with images of Marla and Alison's bodies in the wreckage of their pod, or they'd shift to him arriving at the hab and finding it filled with hordes of Changs, all of them laughing at him for being a stupid "norm." Dawn was a relief, and he knew that no matter what the others did, he couldn't spend another night just sitting in the pod, waiting to be rescued. He was going to have to do something.

Stiffly, he got to his feet and looked around the inside of the pod. The others had made themselves comfortable and fallen asleep some time after he did. The exertion of the previous day had made itself known to him, and he was sore as he moved about, trying not to wake the others.

Slipping out through the airlock, he dropped to the ground and found a sheltered place where he could relieve himself. There were stirrings in the camp, which meant that nearly everyone was going to be up soon, and they'd be wanting answers. Answers which he didn't have, and probably no one else did, either. They couldn't let everyone sit idle, that would lead to panic and paranoia. They had to keep everyone busy in a way that at least made them feel like they were doing something important.

He quietly reentered the pod, found Foucault, shook him gently to wake him, and indicated that Foucault should follow him outside of the pod without waking the others. Once outside, they moved to an area where they were unlikely to be overheard.

"We've got a little bit of time before folks are going to be up and about," Thad told him. "We need to come up with a plan of action before then, so we can give these people something to do. I don't have any good ideas yet, other than letting Tony build his rocket, if we can find some fuel for it. Did you think of anything?"

"Well, let's start by assuming we're not going to be rescued today." Foucault yawned and tried to wipe the sleep off his face. "What are we going to need to do to make sure we can survive another night out here?"

"Gather firewood and make weapons, but that won't be enough to keep everybody busy, and it certainly won't do anything to get us out of here sooner."

Foucault stretched, trying to take some of the stiffness out of his body and wake up at the same time. He'd not had as rough a day as Thad did, but sleeping in the pod was anything but comfortable. A flash of color, some distance up the mountain caught the corner of his eye. He stopped stretching and looked at it. It was one of the parachutes from the pod, folded and flapping. They'd have a better chance of being spotted if the parachutes were spread out.

"Got it!" Foucault said. "We'll send people out to untangle the parachutes and spread them out, so they're easier to spot. Doing that will probably keep the rest of the folks busy for the entire day."

"It certainly buys us some time." Thad nodded. "Let's get everybody up and moving. We'll hold a meeting and announce it in half an hour in front of the pod."

Foucault and Thad set about getting everyone up and informing them about the meeting. Once he was certain that everyone had been informed, Thad headed back to the pod to get ready. As he passed the smoldering remains of the previous night's fire, he stopped. Something about that nagged at him, but he couldn't think of what it might be. Was it that they needed the charcoal to make gunpowder? No, they didn't have the saltpeter or the sulfur to complete the formula. The memory teased him at the edges of his mind, stubbornly refusing to come forward until a passerby mentioned something their first night on the planet reminding him of drunken camping trips he used to take in college. Then it sprang forth, fully formed in his mind. Where was Tony? He had to find Tony!

"Tony!" Thad ran through the camp, shouting, and looking for Tony.

"What?" Tony's head appeared out of the hatch on the pod, with a slightly annoyed expression.

"I've got it!" Thad rushed up to the hatch. "I know what we can use for fuel in the signal rocket!"

"What's that?"

"When I was in college, a bunch of us went camping over Winter Break. One of the guys was a chemistry major and he had this thermos flask he wouldn't let anybody see. We all thought he was bogarting some good booze that he brought.

"One morning, he gets up before the rest of us to pull a little prank on all of us. See, he didn't have booze in that thermos, he had liquid oxygen, and after the first night, he'd dug through the ashes of the campfire, got some charcoal out of it, made sure it wasn't still burning, and stuck it into the thermos.

"He kept it there for a couple of days, then one morning dumped it out in the center of the camp, stuck a fuse on it, lit and ran like hell. When it went off, not only did it wake everybody up, but it blew over all the tents. We wound up cutting the trip short, because a couple of people ended up with shrapnel in them. He'd used too big of a piece. When I asked him about it, he said he'd gotten the idea from reading about old experiments people used to do.

"Think you can rig up something so we can soak the charcoal from the fire in liquid oxygen for a couple of days?"

"Are you kidding me?" The grin on Tony's face was positively shit eating. "I can have that done this afternoon!"